The Poems of Ossian By James Macpherson

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1 Universität Bielefeld Department of Linguistics and Literary Studies Intensive Course British History: Scotland Dr.Michael Pätzold WS 2005/2006 Sophie Hollmann The Poems of Ossian By James Macpherson

2 Introduction: How a Scottish Bard Changed the World When Fragments of Ancient Poetry was first published in 1760 it caused a sensation. Macpherson s translations of tales by a bard called Ossian from ancient Scotland, including the epic poems Fingal and Temora which appeared shortly afterwards, had a massive cultural impact in the 18 th and 19 th century. Napoleon is said to have carried a copy into battle, Goethe used whole passages in Die Leiden des jungen Werther, Herder had somebody read it to him at his deathbed, Ann Radcliff and Walter Scott drew on it to create their own romantic fiction and Ossian was praised as the Homer of the North. The huge number of reprints that appeared in the next 150 years shows its enduring appeal. Although the poems themselves fell out of fashion their impact was permanent. Numerous poems, paintings and pieces of music were inspired by them, and it is the Poems of Ossian that formed the popular image of the Celtic which lasts until today. Even doubts about the authenticity of Macpherson s work did little to reduce their influence. What seems to have struck people about Ossian, however, is not so much its scholarly significance, but the otherwordly atmosphere of the poems. They fitted well into a time in which people reacted against the rationalism of the 18 th century and a view of the physical world, increasingly dominated by sience. They appeared at the dawn of the Romantic Period which saw a rediscovery of local cultures as a result of the break with the cultural authority of classical Rome and it was in fact a rediscovery of ancient Scottish tales. The Author Macpherson was born on 27 th Octobre 1736 at Ruthven, near Inverness, in the Scottish Highlands as the son of a farmer. In 1745 and the following years life changed dramatically through Charles Edward Stuard s disasterous rebellion. Macpherson spent eight years of his youth in a time of violence and opression. The distinctive Highland way of life was threatened by the prohibitions by the crown, 2

3 ment to make the region forever save: the tartan plaid was banned and it was prohibited to carry arms or to play the bagpipes. Macpherson was educated at Aberdeen and Edinburgh and became a teacher in his native village. Two years later, in 1758, he moved back to Edinburgh to start a literary carreer and published the long poem The Highlander. The Scots Magazine published a few more of his poems, but he remained unknown. About the time he wrote The Highlander he became a private tutor. When the family of his pupil spent some time in Moffat in 1759, he met the popular Scotish poet John Home. Home was full of romantic interest and Macpherson knew something about Gaelic poetry, an he provided Home with translations of Gaelic poems from Scotland. Home and others, among them Dr. Hugh Blair, a professtor for rethorics and literature, were fascinated by Macpherson s work and pressed him to offer additional translations. As a result Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and translated from the Gaelic or Erse Language appeared in 1760 and made him famous. And the literary society wanted more. Finally Macpherson started an expedition to the Highlands to find out about more ancient tales. Only one year later Fingal was published and immediately drew comparison with Homer, Virgil and Milton. Only two years later the follow up volume Temora appeared. But already in 1762 doubts were raised about the authenticity of his work in England and Ireland. This controversy was to last for years, because Macpherson did not make his sources public. His most famous critic was Samuel Johnson. After his initial success Macpherson moved to London and took up a post as secretary to the Governor of Florida in He returned in 1766 and became a lobbyist and political pamphleteer. Macpherson died as a wealthy man in He was burried in Westminster Abby at his own expense. A Bard Called Ossian or The Man Who Ressurected the Celts The person centering the action of Fingal and Temora around himself is Ossian, who already appears in Fragments of Ancient Poetry. He is an old, blind bard from the third century, the last of a long family line and the son of Fingal, who died a heroe s 3

4 death together with his legendary fellowship. Guided by Malvina, the young widow of his dead son Oscur, he sings about the heroic fights and deeds of past times. The poem begins with the arrival of adversary ships from Lochlin (Scandinavia), and with Cuchullin rallying his men in defense. Cuchullin engages with the foe, although he has been warned by the ghost of Crugal, an Irish hero, and suffers a humiliating defeat, but when Fingal arrives, he beats the enemy leader Swaran in a single combat. However, Fingal is not only a straighforeward military narrative. The action is riddled with tales of broken love and premature death. The tone is generally melancholic and wistful, rather than triumphantly patriotic. By the middle of the 18 th century Scottish intellectuals already admired the strength, courage and austere lifestyle of the German tribes presented in William Duncan s translation of Ceasar s Commentaries. The image of the Celts Macpherson created, satisfied his readers who appreciated melancholy and gentlemanly behaviour, and it fitted well into a time of admiration of courage and austerity primitive was associated with virtue (Stafford, p.xi). Maybe this was the reason for the immense success of the text. Macpherson developed a picture of the Celtic that approximated the ideas of his contemporaries and that brought back a culture repressed and long forgotten. People like Hugh Blair saw evidence of the creative genius of early society in Macpherson s work. The poems confirmed their expectations of what early poetry was like and confirmed the association of epic sublimity with the earliest periods of society (Stafford, p.xvi). The Question of Authenticity It has long been established that Macpherson based his work on traditional sources to produce imaginative poems not corresponding closely to any identifyable original Gaelic verse, and the idea of a sophisticated hoax still persists. But to take that line is to ignore the circumstances Macpherson worked and grew up under. As a child of the Highlands he must have been listening to the local legends and folklore that had been passed down through generations. The experiences he made later on with Scottish intellectuals, who regarded the values he had been brought up with, as respectable, would have given him a good reason for regarding the ancient tales with serious interest, after he had witnessed the surpression of his culture (Stafford, p.xi). 4

5 When Macpherson set off to his journey through the Highlands in autumn 1760, he had a clear mission. He had to recover Scotland s ancients epic. Within some weeks he had collected a big number of stories and poems. What exactly he did with the material has been subject of scholarly debate ever since. To which extend The Poems of Ossian are really literal translations of original Gaelic verse provoked a famous controversy at his time, which also lasted after his death. The Highland Society of Scotland even set up a committee of investigation, and finally it was officially concluded that Macpherson had not produced close translations of the original material, but that he had nevertheless drawn on the traditional tales and the characters, plots and episodes in them (Stafford, p.viii). While English critics generally regarded the melancholic spirit of Macpherson s work as more important than the material, Celtic scholars, especially from Ireland, critcised his free-handling of Gaelic poetry and chiefly the way in which he had confused the stories from the Fionn and the Ulster Cycles. The cause for their hostility might also have been Macpherson s appropriation of Irish heroes and the refusal to accept the fact that the Scots were originally inhabitants of Ireland (Stafford, p.vii). Macpherson s greatest critic was Samuel Johnson. He regarded him as a charlatan who made up all his writing from hardly anything but his imagination. Although Fingal may be no direct and accurate translation of Gaelic poems that had survived since the third century, the text is not purely forged and not an arrant fake. He could draw on a common pool of stories from his childhood to recreate his own version of the ancient tales. But he was not only a man from the Highlands, but he also had a university education and shared his favourers hopes that early Scottish poetry resembled that of ancient Greece. Macpherson was a traditionalist and an innovator at once, and his work combines the ancient and the modern. It neither belongs exclusively to archaic Gaelic nor to 18 th century English culture. It can only be seen as an attempt to mediate between the two no matter how much of The Poems of Ossian is direct translation and how much imagination (Stafford, p.xviii). The question about the authenticity of the poems, however, stimulated huge interest and research into early Gaelic literature, which is still carried out today since the revival critical interest in the late 1980 s and 1990 s. Macpherson s work again or still attracts serious attention, however one might judge his supposed intentions when he wrote The Poems of Ossian. 5

6 Bibliography Crumey, Andrew. James Macpherson. URL: / ~crumey/james_macpherson.html (visited on Aug. 16, 2005) Hare, J.B. The Poems of Ossian by James MacPherson. URL: (visited on Aug. 16, 2005) Stafford, Fiona. Introduction: The Ossianic Poems of James Macpherson. The Poems of Ossian and Related Works. Ed. Gaskill, Howard. Trownbridge: Redwood Books